Tag Archives: Deconstruction

Back when I first started reading Derrida, one of my mentors who got me into French philosophy recommended Geoffrey Bennington‘s works. At the time, Bennington was one of her PhD advisers at the European Graduate School—along with Alain Badiou and Catherine Malabou. To be honest, I didn’t know who any of these people were, but now I’m just like, “Dang!”. Since I always try to avoid secondary sources, I was reluctant on reading Bennington until last month. This was when I discovered for myself that Bennington is the most renown Derridean expert in the world. In my opinion, Bennington is the go-to secondary source for Derrida.

In the future, I may write about Bennington on Kant in relationship with politics and the state of nature. It appears that the “necessity of contingency” has become a very popular idea in contemporary continental philosophy. In Kant on the Frontier: Philosophy, Politics, and the Ends of the Earth (2017), Bennington appears to have similar thoughts to Quentin Meillassoux. Only that Bennington does not reject Kant like Meillassoux does through the criticism of correlationism. Instead, Bennington follows Kant’s ideas between speculative and practical reason to bring out the antinomy of judgement and the “frontier” on the necessity of contingency. It is this necessity of the necessity of contingency of nature which allows humans to develop the “laws of nature” via interpreting nature. Freedom is the perfect example of this, since the moment one conceptualizes it through the contingency of nature, freedom becomes threatened through its own conceptual boundaries. To conceive of “actual” freedom, as opposed to “possible” freedom, is to think of the necessary contingency (i.e. possibility) of the end and the disappearance of freedom as a representation of freedom. To be fair, the theme on contingency—especially through mathematics—has been around for quite some time. Alain Badiou was one of the first to situate it as an ontology (the study of being). Badiou was heavily influenced by a famous 19th century French poet named Stéphane Mallarmé and his poem, “A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance” (many 20th century French philosophers were influenced by him); he was also influenced by the way Lacan used mathematics in psychoanalysis, and Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave.

Nonetheless, Bennington’s lecture stayed very close to Of Grammatology. He explained Derrida better than I did, which is not surprising. Bennington jumped over a few discourses, such as Husserl and Heidegger where I would have elaborated more on (I mentioned some of their relationships in my post on Stephen Hicks). For example, Bennington made a leap from the relationship between signifiers all the way to trace. While this is the correct move, Bennington leaves out the problem of temporality, which is revealed near the end of the talk with his bogus animation of letters appearing in the white space of the slide. Clearly, Bennington was trying to hint at Derrida’s famous concept called “Spacing”—something that I have addressed in my own readings of Derrida.

His Q&A at the end is also very useful. I like the way he highlights some of the disagreements between psychoanalysts and deconstructors. One of their differences revolves around how Lacan’s psychoanalytical claims are, for Derrida, not completely psychoanalytical. For example, Lacan would sometimes confuse the philosophical transcendental object as the psychoanalytical Objet petit a (object cause of desire). Yet, Bennington ends his answer by remarking on how the circumstances of our world requires psychoanalysts and deconstructors to be friends—something that I agree on. With this being said, I am enrolled in my first graduate class this spring on deconstruction and psychoanalysis which I am very excited about.

If you have read through the entire Of Grammatology, then you should be proud of yourself because it is quite difficult (I heard it is easier in original French). I knew people who threw in the towel within the first 30 pages. Of Grammatology is split into two parts. The difficulty of Part I, which is the first 100 pages in Spivak’s 1997 translation, is comparable to other really difficult texts such as Hegelian dialectics and Lacanian psychoanalysis. If you understand Part I, then Part II, which is the remaining 200-300 pages, gradually gets easier. Part II resembles Derrida’s early thoughts on deconstruction in relationship with politics. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl are the key philosophers for understanding Derrida.

Just like other major works by most philosophers, Of Grammatology requires more than one read. I have read it so many times that some of its pages are falling out. Even though I still occasionally read this book and learn something new every time, it is no longer on my active reading list because I am constantly occupied with other books (I am going to school, working, and doing my own research at the same time). If my posts on Derrida has assisted you on your readings on Of Grammatology or further understandings of Derrida, then you have made my day. If you enjoy Derrida, I would suggest you to try reading French novelist / critic, Maurice Blanchot—especially his books, The Space of Literature, and The Step Not Beyond.

This is a revised version of my essay that I wrote on Jacques Derrida’s key text, Voice and Phenomenon (1967). It is the same essay that I used as sample writing for my 2019 graduate school applications. In general, this essay received many positive feedback from professors in English and Philosophy departments, particularly in regards to its complexity, rigor, and clarity. One professor even told me that most graduate students don’t know Derrida the way I do (I am sure this is not true, but I was flattered).

Since I always enjoyed doing research on the human condition as a “hobby”, I might as well try and get a degree for it. But my attempts at getting into grad school was not easy. This is because I am applying for a graduate academic degree with my non-academic bachelors of design. Most graduate programs are very competitive, where I am competing with everyone who has an academic background and a GPA that is most likely higher than mine (though grades aren’t everything). I had to make up for this with my sample writing, letter of intent, and reference letters. Thus, the purpose of this essay was not only to demonstrate my writing abilities, but my Derridean savviness which were all self-taught (I have been studying Derrida for the past 4-5 years). Against these odds, I am happy to tell you that I got accepted to do my masters degree. I was also offered funding (which will fully fund my masters) in the condition that I write my thesis / research paper on Derrida and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, which I anticipate will be very difficult.

Mistakes and Clarifications

This essay was written in Chicago style where the endnotes are actually footnotes in the real version. There are a few mistakes in this essay that needs correction. For example, I did not address how Derrida translates the German word “Bedeuten” into “Bedeutung” (thanks to the prof who pointed this out). Derrida translates bedeuten into the French idiom “vouloir-dire” which translates into English as “want to say” or “to mean”. Derrida does not translate bedeutung in his works because (I think) he is trying to show how bedeutung is actually a bedeuten—a “want to say”, where the problem of intentionality via the transcendental arises. I also did not address why indication “points”. Derrida refers to this pointing as “the point of the finger”, which is entangled as an expression.

My use of the word “soul” is not as superstitious as most readers think. The term is complex with a history that crosses over to Heidegger and other philosophers like Aristotle (i.e. soul in relation to the body in metaphysics). I also did not explain protention and retention that well. When I speak of the word “now” (i.e. the “newness of now”), I am referring to protention. There are also several wordy sentences that needs to be rewritten.

Unfortunately, I currently don’t have time fix any of these errors and will leave them intact until I work out a better version. Regardless, you will get a taste of a more sophisticated, difficult, and a less diluted form of my introductory post on Derrida. This essay focuses on a Kantian reading of Derrida which excludes Heidegger, who is central to Derridean thought (I was limited to 10 pages). I also gave my essay a lame title due to it being a sample writing.

A Close Reading on Jacques Derrida’s Voice and Phenomenon

In 20th century, French philosopher Jacques Derrida came to a radical conclusion that our experience of temporality divides self-reflection.[1] Derrida achieves this by deconstructing Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology where Husserl attempts to reach the “purity of expression”. In this essay, I will address Derrida’s thoughts on how intentionality and temporality contaminate the purity of expression through Husserl’s concepts of indicative and expressive sign. To do this, I will first introduce the entanglement between indicative and expressive signs that one encounters through external communicative acts such as writing. From this, I will elaborate on how the conveying (speaker / writer) and receiving subject (auditor / reader) animates these signs through the intentionality of their internal “solitary life of the soul”[2] which creates the issues of interpretation. Finally, I will follow Derrida on Husserl’s thoughts to isolate indication from expression only to discover that pure expression is contaminated by the consciousness of time. As we will see in the conclusion of this essay, the notion of pure expression via speech and writing will be rendered problematic before the subject expresses externally through communicative acts. This will lead us to one of the major themes of post-structural thought on “the crisis of meaning” which is found prevalent in all forms of arts and literature. To see how we arrive at such case, let us begin by extrapolating Derrida’s thoughts on Husserl’s problem of the sign.

The problem with the word “sign” is that it contains a duality of sense which can at once be indicative and expressive.[3] An indicative sign points to something, it does not have a “Bedeutung” (we will translate this word momentarily).[4] Since all words points to something, the best example of indicative sign is writing. Consequently, the written German word Bedeutung must point us to something other than its ideal sense.[5] If we were to translate the indicative sign of Bedeutung which means “want-to-say”, the word will now point to such meaning which appears as the expressive sign.[6] Simply put, the expressive sign is entangled with the indicative sign of Bedeutung, where it points to the expression of “want-to-say”. An indicative sign does not say anything, where it simply points, and an expressive sign, mixed with an indicative sign, “wants-to-say” by pointing to the unity of sense.[7] Here, we encounter two fundamental issues. First, indicative and expressive signs are impossible to distinguish because they are entangled between the conveying and receiving subject through writing.[8] This implies that indicative signs are external signs that exists in the world because it functions like a medium that transmits the possibility of expressive meaning from the conveyor to the receiving subject. Second, while an expression is entangled with indication, the opposite is not always true.[9] If one writes “iekariukedjutu”[10], the term would still be an indication since it points to something, but without any specific expression. This is experienced in our initial encounter of Bedeutung without knowing its expressive meaning.

If the indicative sign is external, then it must be outside of our internal “solitary life of the soul”. Writing is dead and inanimate without a living soul who gives it life by animating its indicative character into an expression.[11] When the conveying subject expresses indicatively, such sign must first be animated by their solitary life of the soul with an intention to express. This intended sign passes externally as indication (i.e. writing) which is reanimated as an expression by the receiving subject. Similarly, our body which is indicative and external to our soul, is inanimate without she who intentionally animates it from her internal soul (otherwise, our body would be dead). One expresses the self through the intention of animating the indicative sign, giving life to their body and words by turning it into external physical acts such as gestures, speech, or writing. For now, let us say that expressive signs are only possible by animating indicative signs through a certain “outside” in external discourse of the empirical world.[12] The conveying subject expresses their phenomenological experience within their soul because they desireto express (i.e. the expression of their concept of life, philosophy, beliefs, etc.). Thus, all communication consists of two poles: (1) the conveying subject whose intention animates her body into an expressive act via gestures, speech or writing, which externally indicates to (2) the receiving subject who interprets and reanimates the conveyer’s indication with their own expressive intentions and soul. From the perspective of the conveying subject, expressions must pass from their internal solitary life of the soul outwardlyinto an intended external bodily expressive act.From the perspective of the receiving subject, not all indicative signs that the conveying subject expresses indicatively are expressive. It is when the receiving subject who intentionally animates such indications where we recognize the contamination of the sign through intentionality.[13]

Let us return to our initial experience of the term Bedeutung, and the possibility of its contamination. For the receiving subject, the indicativeexperience of Bedeutung lies in how they don’t know its expressive meaning (they don’t know where it points). The receiving subject will intentionally animate Bedeutung without knowing its expressive meaning because they are motivated by their internal thoughts (inner monologue).[14] By reading the word Bedeutung, the receiving subject turns the term into an ideal sense of expression—where sense wants to signify itself even if the reader does not know its expressionor is not aware of the word’shistorical intentions.[15] The receiving subject’s intention will contaminate their ownexperience when they reanimate the indicative sign with an expressive meaning that ignores or greatly deviates from the conveying subject’s intention. Here, we are introduced with the issue of inter-subjectivity where the receiving subject is never the speaker and we can only experience the world from our own experience.Furthermore, pure expression is no longer possible when the conveying subject attempts to express their solitary life of the soul externally as indication such as Bedeutung.The animated sign that is expressed outwardly becomes corruptible through the possibilities of being misinterpreted in external communicative discourse. The impurity of expression stems from the lack of intended self-presence of the living soul which cannot be carried into indicated / expressed signsthrough the outside world because words are inherently dead. The receiving subject can never experience the conveying subject’s pure expression and intentions through external indications.[16]

Let us shift towards internal discourse of communication to find the purity of expression. Husserl will devote much of his effort to untangle indication from the expressive sign to reach the “purity of expression”. He saw that, since indications are external, pure expression can only occur without it leaving our internal solitary life of the soul—namely, without it leaving our inner silent monologue.[17]This leads to a question which carries out the rest of Derrida’s deconstruction on Husserl: if for the conveying subject, expression is only possible from animating the indicative sign as external acts, does she learn anything about herself when she silently expresses through inner monologue which never passes through the outside?[18] In order to address this issue, Husserl will consequently add the terms “expressive referral” (Hinzeigen) and “indicative referral” (Anzeigen).[19] Following closely to Husserl’s thoughts of finding the purity of expression, Derrida attempts to separate the indicative and expressive sign by isolating the spatial (external; empirical; indicative) from the temporal (internal; time-consciousness; inner-monologue). For Derrida, this was pursued only to discover that neither oppositions can be distinguished from each other.[20] Within inner monologue of the conveying subject, expressive communicative acts functions as a representation of sense. The conveying subject is the receiving subject who “hears-oneself-speak”.[21] These communicative acts that are expressed internally by the conveying subject are represented (imagined) in their minds as immediate psychical acts. Certainly, one can say that inner monologue is where we discover pure expressivity, not only because it is closest to the proximity of the soul where the speaker immediately hears-oneself-speak without distance, but because monologue constitutes subjectivity of self and consciousness as such.[22] However, for Derrida, such monologue is contaminated by time which is distinguished through the blink of an eye.[23] If pure expression via inner monologue is represented in our minds through the movement of time, then they must have nothing to do with primal impressions (perception and senses) which constitutes the present moment.[24] In Husserl’s phenomenology of time consciousness, the present moment of now that is established through primal impression is only possible through the retention of this moment which had just past (the words you just read through time).[25] Retention is not constituted by our primal impression because it is an imaginary perception. Without retention that establishes a difference with the present moment, the punctuality and newness of “now” would not be possible.[26] Thus, inner monologue—the pure expressive self and consciousness—is contaminated by our experience of time. As a result, this turns inner monologue into non-perception (without primal impression of sense) because it has always been represented and imagined.[27] For Husserl, the subject will imagine as if they were silently speaking to themselves, even when they have no need to do so since their perception of psychical acts and lived experiences are immediately present.[28] Yet, by privileging such perceptions as presence, one not only forgets the effects of time, but how these perceptions and monologue are imagined representations of the present which has now past. As such, Derrida refers to language as always being “worked over by fiction”.[29] The intended self-presence within hearing-oneself-speak stems from a represented perception which makes the establishment of presence and meaning late.[30] This slight delay implies how the presence of this present moment is only possible through an imaginative supplement of sense which is what the present originally lacks. In order to privilege presence, one negates its inherent absence.

In the final analysis, three main ideas are presented in this essay. First, self-expression is no longer pure the moment we express outwardly—even before represented expression arises from the solitary life of the soul. To say that there is a purity of expression is to recognize how it is contaminated by the movement of time and the becoming-Other within internal discourse. This suggests that pure self consciousness is pre-constructed through something that is more originary and pre-phenomenological: a trace which constitutes the difference between “now” and its alterity of retention.[31] By constituting consciousness through inner monologue, the temporal division of self-reflection becomes an unavoidable and originary contamination.[32] Second, this not only shows how time contaminates the internal discourse of both conveying and receiving subject, it also reveals the main difference between Husserl and Derrida. Husserl wishes to maintain the difference between indication and expression in order to show how pure expression is possible through indicative signs that occurs within silent monologue. Derrida rejects Husserl’s compartmentalization of the two signs since the expressive sign cannot be distinguished from indication. This is recognized through Derrida’s use of “Bedeutung” as an example of indication / expression to show how the receiving subject (i.e. you, the reader) is engaged with their own animating intentions instead of the conveying subject’s. For Derrida, indicative signs are always already an expression that is influenced by time as the receiving subject engages with it. Third, the privilege of an imaginary perception as presence is where Derrida locates the notion of the supplement. This “dangerous supplement” occurs when the receiving subject substitutes their expressive intention as the conveyor’s. From the receiving subject’s point of view, the conveyor’s indicative signs are supplemented (imagined) as expressive signs, even when these indications are part of the conveyor’s animating expression that cannot be past onto the receiver through writing.[33] In another words, the conveying subject’s intention is supplemented as if it were present, even when this imaginary intention only consists of the receiver’s inner monologue which is complicated by their own experience of temporality. Therefore, we can say that, “communication” is the failure of communication. Our attempts in transmitting pure expression through speech and writing is impossible. There is no such thing as “clear writing”.

Instead of having written signs which records a truth from our soul, signs end up producing a truth where its expressive meaning varies depending on the receiving subject’s intentions. As we noted earlier, this is where we see how intentionalityplays an important role on interpreting communicative acts. But it is also here, where we recognize the issues of translation. It becomes impossible to understand the indicative word which is only expressive by being reanimated through the intention of the translator / reader.[34] The longer time passes, the more difficult it is to reconstitute the originary intention of the conveying subject.[35] It is at this moment where we become lost in the crisis of meaning. Although this should not always be seen as negativity, it becomes apparent that one only reads what they desire to read under a particular “sense” (modern sense, surreal sense, classical sense, etc.) through the spell of the indicative sign, where its intentions were expressed within a specific historical time. Yet, it is from these writings, where the contemporary reader reanimates dead words and rediscover a hidden intention. Through the resurrection of the external indicative sign, we recognize Derrida’s famous aporia: the absence of originary presence that is found between the conveying and receiving subject. The internal expressions as you read this text becomes the supplement of the conveying subject’s intention which has been contaminated by your experience of space and time. This is where deconstruction begins.

[4] Ibid., 40. Indicative sign is equivalent to the Saussurean concept of “Signifier”.

[5] Ibid., 7-8. Derrida intentionally avoids translating Bedeutung for a reason slightly different to what I have demonstrated here. Derrida’s concerns are directed towards the “pure morphology” (the pure possibility of a meaningful discourse) of such word through grammar and logical a priori of language which Husserl privileged as the telos of “being present”. This pure morphology is also found in the word “is” within the fundamental question of philosophy: “What is being?”.

[6] Ibid., 40. Expressive sign is equivalent to the Saussurean term “Signified”. Bedeutung is often translated into “signification”. The reason Derrida calls it “want-to-say” is due to the problems of the receiving subject’s intentionality (yours), something which we will see later on in this essay.

[7] Most words carry an immediate unity of sense because we already know its expressive meaning.

[10] Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakavorty Spivak (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 123. This is a word that was invented by Nambikwara tribe which means “act of writing” or “drawing lines”. Notice how the meaning of this word refers to external expressive acts.

[16] Ibid., 34. “If communication of manifestation is essentially indicative, it is so because the presence of the other’s lived-experience is denied to our originary intuition.”

[17] Ibid., “The relation to the other as non-presence is therefore the impurity of expression. In order to reduce indication in language and attain once more finally pure expressivity it is therefore necessary to suspend the relation to others. Then I would no longer have to pass through the mediation of the physical side.”

[20] Ibid., 48-55, 69-74. Husserl refers to the isolation of the spatial as “phenomenological reduction”. Derrida realizes how the temporal (internal) cannot be completely distinguished from the spatial (external) because the internal voice is complicated by our consciousness of time which opens up “the becoming time of space [external] and the becoming space of time [internal]” (Derrida, Of Grammatology, 68). Even after reduction, the spatial is never completely reduced because space is in time.

[21] This phenomenon can be experienced as one reads this text. The conveying subject internally hears herself speak as she performs external speech or written acts. Conversely, the receiving subject also hears herself speak internally as she reanimates external indicative signs from silent reading or listening.

[25] Derrida, Of Grammatology, 67-73. The common conception on the movement of time is experienced as a straight line. This linearity is also recognized in writing when one reads through time. For Derrida, time is non-linear via the “now” being constituted by retention. The “now” is “the deferred effect of which Freud speaks”. (See also, Derrida, Voice and Phenomenon, 71-73).

[31] Derrida, Of Grammatology, 69. We can also say that consciousness is constructed by the unconscious—of what Derrida calls “Spacing” or “Archi-Writing” that is found within “the fabric of trace”. For Derrida, the concept of trace, which can only be defined through specific phenomenological and ontological precautions, is the origin of thought.

[33] Ibid., 149. The concept of “supplement” is used to take the place of what originally lacks within presence. The supplement is the addition of nothing. This originary supplement is introduced in the final chapter of Voice and Phenomenon. It is extensively discussed in Of Grammatology when Derrida deconstructs Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Essay on the Origin of Languages. As Derrida points out, “Blindness to the supplement is the law”.

[34] For example, in Plato’s Pharmacy, Derrida questions the translation of “pharmakon” which can at once mean “remedy” and “poison”.

Today, I would like to quickly comment on this talk that Stephen Hicks gave last year at the University of British Columbia. Despite some of his massive generalizations on 19th-20th century philosophers, I think Hicks gave an excellent overview on Kantianism and some of his influences on “postmodernism”. He is also right that both analytic and continental thinkers came to similar conclusions on metaphysics regardless of their differences. In this post, I will elaborate on some of Hick’s generalizations by talking about Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and weaving the latter with Jacques Derrida. I will also provide a quick analysis of a famous passage from Derrida’s Specters of Marx.

I would like to make four points:

First (1), if you think Nietzsche and Heidegger are “irrationalists”, then you really should reread their works. This is especially true if you also think they are outright nihilists, since both of them focuses on overcoming nihilism.

In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche saw how we needed to balance rationality (Apollonian) with our irrationalities (Dionysian) [speaking in Hick’s terms]. For Nietzsche, the problem is we have always privileged rationality over irrationality. Thus, he suggests that we should consider our own passions instead of being rational for once. Yet, we must also not disregard our rationality since the two are like yin yang. Here, it is hard to pinpoint Nietzche’s exact meaning since he writes in metaphors—something Heidegger and Derrida took great interest in.

In Nietzsche’s later works, he foresaw how his era will result in nihilism where people will destroy their own Christian beliefs due to the prominence of rationalism (i.e. the proliferation of science via the enlightenment era). Furthermore, he saw Christianity as a nihilistic ideology which focuses on rejecting life instead of affirming it (i.e. they believe heaven is a better place). Although Nietzsche was a controversial critic of Christianity and any religion that deals with promoting moralities that disapproves of life, he wanted to solve the problem of nihilism by trying to understand it. Nietzsche overcomes nihilism through the notion of perspectivism, where one must “destroy” some of our older “traditions” which allows us to create new moral perspectives that affirms life, open-mindedness, strength and courage (by “destroy”, I am alluding to Heidegger’s notion of “destruktion”, which Derrida translates into “deconstruction”). This is what Nietzsche famously calls “the will to power”. In some ways, Nietzsche was a moral nihilist, but only because of what he saw that was inevitably coming.

When Hicks points out how Heidegger thinks “logic gets in the way and we have to set aside logic and find some other way [to get to truth?]”, Heidegger is not necessarily saying that logic is useless and we should bide to irrationalism. But rather, he is suggesting that logic becomes contradictory, and thus “disintegrates” once we try to understand “Being” through time (I will demonstrate this later on). Therefore, we have to put in place, an “originary questioning” of being—of what Heidegger calls, the question of the historicity of Dasein (Being-There). When Heidegger asks the question, “What is Being?”, what he really mean is, “What is Being-there?”—or, “What is the Being that is already there?” (….which allows the thinking subject to formulate the question in the first place?).

Simply put, there has to first be a human “Being” who is “there” within temporality in order for there to be a “logical” thinking subject (i.e. you have to first exist in the world, temporally). This “there-ness” of Being (in-the-world)—the “Da” of Dasein—is our experience of the temporality of Being (Sein). From this, Heidegger (and Derrida), will challenge Kant’s views on temporality to distinguish the temporality of Dasein from the intratemporality of the “I think” subject (consciousness). Dasein is what precedes and makes possible, the famous rationalist / foundationalist Cartesian statement, “I think, therefore I am” (Hicks is a foundationalist). And it is within the temporality of Dasein where Heidegger coins his famous concept known as “Care”.

If you recall my last post on Derrida, I was intentionally being vague when I pointed out how when we read a text through temporality, we trace to a “history of all sorts”. This history that we trace is the historicity of Dasein (after all, Heidegger states that “language is the house of being”). But why do we trace towards the “historicity” of Dasein and not the “presence” of Dasein? Remember how trace is the unity between retention and protention where this present moment which had just past (the words you just read) unites with what is to come (the words you are about to read). On one hand, the presence of the present is always a past, which refers to a historicity of Dasein. On the other hand, this past is always moving towards a future. The logic that “disintegrates” into temporality is how this present moment is always already a past of what is to come.

Heidegger, similar to Derrida, are thinkers of origins. They are trying to conceive of a “philosophy” that can establish the “grounds” for all philosophies, epistemology, foundationalism, rationalism, empiricism, skepticism, literature, sciences, physics, and metaphysics, etc. In another words, they are trying to think of how philosophy and the very gesture of thinking arises, which in turn, establishes the philosophy of science, society, ethics, politics, art, love, etc. If you understand all of this, then you are almost at the forefront of contemporary continental philosophy.Secondly (2), Lyotard, Foucault and Derrida should not be summarized together as if they had similar end goals simply because they were all “far left in the political spectrum” (that’s absurd). The reason is because their ideas varies greatly. For example, while Foucault and Derrida may appear to be “deconstructing” a historical discourse with similar influences such as Hegel and Heidegger, both of their approaches are very different. Foucault adopted certain aspects of Nietzchean thought, such as his “hermeneutics of suspicion” (a term coined by Ricoeur) and his “genealogical methods” of ideas, history, sex, and power. Whereas Derrida, in addition to Nietzsche, was influenced by Saussure, Freud, Lacan and most importantly, Husserl’s phenomenology. In fact, Derrida was a critic of Foucault, who attacked his magnum opus by close reading just three of its pages at a conference—which was kind of embarrassing for Foucault, since he was an intellectual superstar in France. Hence, when someone speaks of the word “deconstruction”, do they mean Derrida or Foucault? Deconstruction is often associated with the former and not the latter (an article that mixes this up is this one).

Third (3), when Hicks quotes Derrida on how deconstruction consists of a certain “tradition” and “spirit” of Marxism, Derrida is referring to his book, Specters of Marx. Something important that I must point out from this book is that Derrida thinks criticizing Marx is equally important. Basically, Derrida is trying to speak of how there is a certain “spirit” of Marx, such as his ways of radical criticism, that people always-already carry out in our capitalist world today, even if Marxism is long dead (i.e. Hicks and Peterson—the latter even used a few Marxist ideas to fight against Marxism). Therefore, we are the “specters” of Marx—even when most of us are not strictly Marxists. This form of radical criticism is what Derrida sees in “deconstruction” (destruktion; de-structure; destroy; interpretation) as he tries to situate it in politics later in his life. Hick’s naive interpretation of Derrida shows how little he knows about him—for, Hicks is not aware of Derrida’s consistent use of allusions.

Let us look at a popular passage from Specters of Marx:

“There will be no future without this. Not without Marx, no future without Marx, without the memory and the inheritance of Marx: in any case of a certain Marx, of his genius, of at least one of his spirits. For this will be our hypothesis or rather our bias: there is more than one of them, there must be more than one of them.”

This passage can be easily misread because it consists of at least two allusions that only Derridean readers can see. The first allusion is the word “spirit”, which refers to the way Heidegger avoids using the famous German word “Geist” (spirit) in his magnum opus, Being and Time. But after refusing to use this word, Heidegger suddenly starts using it later in his lectures. Derrida wrote about this in a famous book called, Of Spirit—a book that I think only Heideggerian experts can understand because it is incredibly difficult. The title “Of Spirit”, is also an allusion to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The German word “Geist” is sometimes regarded as untranslatable since it can mean “spirit”, “ghost” (specter), and “mind”. In Of Spirit, Derrida tries to figure out the morphology of Geist and what it could mean for Heidegger throughout his usages as he took part in National Socialism (See here). In addition, “Geist” is also important because Hegel uses it quite often as “zeigeist” and “volkgeist”. At the end of my last post on Quentin Meillassoux, did you notice how I put in quotation, the “spirit” of Derrida? This is why.

The second allusion in this passage, is Derrida’s use of the word “future” (protention) which cannot “be” without a “memory” of Marx (retention). Again, for those who has read my introductory post on Derrida, this should be easily understood because trace is the unity between a past (retention of Marx) and what is to come (protention) [but I must point out that “trace” is much more sophisticated since it relates to Heidegger’s Dasein and the unity between life and death]. Basically, Derrida is applying his early thoughts on Husserl and Heidegger into Marx. But since I have not published my still “in the works” writings on the relationships between Heidegger and Derrida (along with Husserl and Hegel), I will not speak of this further.

[Side note: I am not an expert on Lyotard. But I always had a theory on why he called 20th century French philosophy as “post-modernism”. In a Derridean sense, the term “post” revolves around what is to come from a modernism that has past.]

I think Derrida sometimes “hides” his thoughts behind allusions to shield from people who are not familiar with his works. This idea originates from Socrates, where he criticized writing since anyone can take any text and read it whichever way they want (similar to the problem that Derrida pointed out). Thus, Socrates privileged passing on his philosophy via speech instead of writing—an idea Derrida finds problematic since speech is a form of writing. Socrates did this in order to prevent sophists who knows nothing about philosophy from using his works against him. Hence, Socrates never wrote anything, you can only find him through the works of Plato, who was Socrates’ student. I think Derrida is doing something very similar in this quote from Specters of Marx.

Finally (4), in terms of how all these “postmodernists” secretly rebrand themselves as “the new left”. The argument is not strong once you realize that most of these philosophers disagrees with each other quite a bit within the French intellectual arena. This suggests that it is not so much about politics in the political sense, but rather, it is about politics in the intellectual sense in regards to who has the better and accurate philosophy.

On another note, I don’t think I will defend for all “postmodernists” since I only read a selected few. We should consider how Derrida did not begin his career with Marx, but Husserl. Derrida’s first book was as an essay about Husserl’s, The Origins of Geometry. If we were to talk strictly about political philosophy, Derrida is much more influenced by Rousseau than Marx, where the former preceded the latter by one century. In particular, Derrida was influenced by Rousseau’s famous book, The Social Contract, his paper, The Essay on the Origin of Languages, and his autobiographies, TheConfessions, and especially, Reveries of a Solitary Walker. In fact, Derrida was a reader of Rousseau since his teenage years. He has written essays on Rousseau in his early 20s, long before he became famous in his mid-30s when he wrote about Heidegger, Husserl and Saussure, but you would have to read those early essays in French.

“No one will ever know from what secret I write and the fact that I say so changes nothing.” —Jacques Derrida

Reading Derrida is no easy task. Today, I will show you an easier way of understanding some of the major components to Derrida’s project on “deconstruction”. We will be looking at the problem of interpretation and why there are infinite interpretations to any texts.

Although this post will be quite “intense” (just like me when I talk about philosophy in real life), it supposes that the reader knows nothing about the history of philosophy, Ferdinand de Saussure’s general linguistics, semiotics and Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology. This means I will be trying to explain Derrida’s thoughts in layman terms, which is not easy. Despite my attempts in simplicity, this post will gradually get more difficult and abstract due to the nature of the topic such as temporality: our first-person experience of time.

An Overview on the “Problem” of Interpretation

Derrida is known for showing that there are infinite number of interpretations in any text (or events). As soon as any (philosophical) book leaves the original author and gets distributed to its readers, the reader becomes the author where they reproduce their own unique interpretation and meanings of the text. What this “meaning” consists of will depend on the reader’s contextual framework that takes place as they read the book. Now, suppose that the readers of this first book becomes authors who responds to the original author; and the people who reads this new author’s works becomes authors. As a result, we end up creating more books based on our “unique” interpretations of other texts which eventually leads to centuries of books, novels, and every single piece of writing on the planet.

Since interpretation and meaning is determined by context, in order for me to fully understand the intentions of the original author, there is a demand that I must understand their contextual background or “where they are coming from”. Thus, if I want to understand this brand new philosophy book, I will have to read all of these other books to develop a more “accurate” interpretation of the author. As a result, I end up chasing the entire history of philosophy because that is what the original author did. This is where Derrida takes a jab at philosophy since nearly all philosophy books are a response to other philosophers (and all books are influenced by other books in general).

The problem with closely interpreting these “texts” in the book is that the inscription of writing also consists of a series historical contexts which transformed itself into English language as such. Every language is a translation, mediation, and a combination of other historical languages. Therefore, we encounter the same problem where, in order to understand certain terms and words within the book, we also have to understand its historical background: the etymology of words. As we attempt to do this, we will discover that language and translations are actually full of holes and gaps known as an “aporia” , where the meaning of certain words becomes undecidable. The most famous example is from Derrida’s Plato’s Pharmacy, where the English translation in some of Plato’s works shows how the word “Pharmakon” can mean “poison”, “remedy”, and “scapegoat” at the same time. This is why Derrideans likes to play with translations, since these aporias reveals the contradictory nature of interpretation. It is also one of many reasons why Derrideans are found in comparative literature rather than philosophy departments in universities.

Essentially, it is impossible to acquire the entire context of any book since they are based on a “unique” interpretation of the previous (historical) authors, where these authors are based on readings of other authors, and to infinity. There is no such thing as an “accurate” interpretation of a book that is identical to the intentionality of the original author—including Derrida’s own “deconstruction” of the text. This is the fundamental nature of interpretation regardless of how clear someone’s writing is. Even if you read a book closely (i.e. “deconstruction”) the reader will discover the author’s contradictions and the instability / uncertainty of their thoughts (via aporias, etc.). At the same time, the reader will also encounter their own interpretive contradictions as they read the author’s work. When you read Derrida, you are reading him read other people’s works. The frustration people get while reading Derrida is part of what he is trying to show you. But this does not mean that one cannot establish meaning or interpretation to any text. Rather, and once again, meaning is defined and established by a contingent historical framework that is unique to the individual subject which can never be temporally “pinned down” with precision (you will see why later on).

On Language: Speech and Writing

“Socrates—he who does not write” — Friedrich Nietzsche

In the most general sense, language consists of two forms: speech and writing. Let us begin by considering how you are reading a written transcript of my spoken words in this post. Three phenomenon occurs (I will use some of these as a point of reference later on):

1) This writing becomes the representation of my spoken words where I would have communicated to you in spoken form if you sat in front of me. This argument traces back to Plato, who suggested that writing is only used to represent speech, whereas speech is more authentic than writing because it is representation of our mental thoughts. This argument as we will see later on, is false.

2) As you read these words, you are supplementing my absent being as a presence. You are reading this text as if I am speaking / communicating to you, even when I am not speaking / communicating to you before your eyes (I will get to this in the next point). This supplementation happens all the time. For example, when we read a novel, we are reading it as if the characters in it are present in our mind, even when they are absent. You are reading Samuel Beckett, even when you are reading an inscription of a ghost who died 30 years ago. The news reporter appears to be talking to you on the television, even when they are absent and you are looking at a black screen. Writing consists of an element of absence. There are times when we recognize this absence within writing—such as when a stranger sends you an email, text message, post card or a letter and you fail to supplement their absence since you do not know who they are (hence, it is “creepy”). Another instance where this absence becomes apparent is when we encounter a word that is untranslatable.

3) When you are reading this text, I am actually not talking to you because you are talking to yourself. The presence that you supplement for my absence is not me, but yourself, the reader. You are the speaker of my (your) words. This phenomenon will be very important for us to understand once we get to Husserlian phenomenology, where we will learn why “the reader becomes the author”. Essentially, “silent reading” is never silent because we are always talking to ourselves through inner monologue.

Sounds (Phonemes) and Images (Graphemes)

Now that I have roughly sketched out the premises of our discussion, we will learn Saussure’s general linguistics. I began by saying that, language consists of two forms: speech and writing. Let us consider these forms by isolating them from each other.

Speech by itself consists of individual units of sounds. These individual units can be anything from a baby uttering non-sense, all the way to you talking to your boss about how stupid they are. In short, speech is heard and not seen. On the other hand, writing consists solely of visual elements. Just as a baby who utters units of sounds which makes “no sense”, she can also scribble visible lines on a piece of paper in unintelligible ways. Writing is what we refer as image, which is the visual elements of language. What is unique about images is that it is not restricted to “writing” or any forms of inscription. Images also includes everything that we see and it is the dominate form of language. For example, the physical cup that is sitting beside my computer which I can visually see is what I phonetically call “cup”. The photo you see in my “About” page is Bobby, etc. This is why Derrida will often say that writing is everywhere since everything we see are images.

If unique sounds are not seen, and unique images are without sounds, then how do we know certain sounds relates to certain images? We know that specific units of images refers to a specific unit of sound because we are aware of the “concept” of language. I know that, the image “A” is associated with the sound “A” because I already understand the concept—which is that of English language.

Saussure referred semiotics as “general” linguistics because he saw how “sounds” can be represented with even more specific sonic units known as “phonemes”; and “images” into specific “graphemes” (and within these, we can create even more units such as glossemes, cheremes, etc.). In effect, this turns language into an object that can be studied as a science, such as linguistics. For Derrida, expanding general linguistics into phonemes and graphemes does not solve any of the fundamental problems of language in relationship to “being”. This is because Derrida saw how linguists are just going to create more conceptual sounds and images to represent our current system of sounds and images (we must be cautious here, because Derrida is not trying to critique linguistics).

Signifier and Signified

Ultimately, these varying units of sounds and images are what Saussure calls “signifier”. Whereas the “concept” is how these specific sounds and images creates meaning—of what we shall call the “ideality of sense”. It “makes sense” that the sound and image of the word “tree” coincides with each other. Yet, there is no particular reason why the sound “tree” is linked to the image of a tree. Their relationship is “arbitrary” (this is known as the “arbitrariness of the sign”).

Before we move any further, let us once again, return to the beginning where I said that language consists of two forms: speech (sounds) and writing (images). What we begin to see is how the fundamental properties of speech and writing are required in order to represent the concept of language. Another words, speech is actually a form of writing and vice versa, since they are both representing the same language that we already know. Thus, Plato was wrong when he said that writing is only used to represent speech, and that speech is more authentic than writing since it is closer to our thoughts (refer #1).

The complication arises from the influence of Louis Hjelmslev at the Copenhagen school of linguistics, who points out that the signifier (sound-image) is characterized as physical forms, whereas the signified “concept” is a mental concept. For example, we get a mental concept, such as an image of a tree in our minds, when we physically read the signifier “tree” as it appears before your eyes on this page. This “material” external form of writing (i.e. this text) along with the external sounds you hear (i.e. when someone is talking to you) are combined together as an mental “internal” concept. Everything that is visually external to you, along with every sound you externally make / hear, is only possible because of how your brain processed it internally. When someone is explaining to you how thunderclouds are formed at a coffee shop, you are creating an internal mental image of what they are externally signifying as they speak.

Differance

The twist Derrida puts into all this, is of two things. First, this internal signified / “mental concept”, is actually just more signifiers (we will not fully understand why this is the case until we get to Husserl’s phenomenology and temporality). For example, if I write the word “poop”, in your head you will be thinking of poop in conjunction with speaking to yourself the sound “poop”. This mental “poop”—the “mental concept”, which is an image of a piece of poop—is just another signifier, and not a signified. To explain this simply, Derrideans often uses the popular “chasing the dictionary” example. Every signifier I search in the dictionary (i.e. poop) will lead me to its definition (signified), which is just more signifiers that are used to describe the signifier I searched for. Suppose that, within this definition, I do not know what another signifier meant, and I begin to search for that signifier and the same thing happens. As a result, I endlessly chase the dictionary around for signifiers, only to find out that there are near infinite amount of signifiers that represents other signifiers (also, when I search and look into the etymology of these signifiers, I find more signifiers). These signifiers which leads to different signifiers is where the idea of difference comes from (it is also found in Saussure’s text, I cannot recall where from memory). The fact that I know poop is not the same as dog or table, chair, etc. allows poop to have its meaning.

Derrida deploys the word “differance” (a spelling mistake) to describe how the signifier’s meaning is established by what it is not—such as its oppositions—where meaning is never completely stable due to these differences. In addition, differance is also used to show how the presence of meaning is only possible through its own absence via differences, which is nevertheless still “present” (something which we will not understand until later on). The reason why Derrida changes the “e” to an “a” is to show that writing can actually do more than speech. In French, the proper spelling of “difference”, and the spelling mistake “differance” verbally sounds the same. Their differences can only be recognized in writing. Here, Derrida is taking a “revenge” on Plato for calling writing secondary even when it is not. There are more reasons why Derrida calls it “differance” such as its play on the words “differ” and “defer”—I will not talk about these here (See his essay called, Differance).

Second, while Hjelmslev thinks only the signified is an internal mental concept. We now see how—since the signified is just more signifiers—even the signifier becomes internal. This will be a contradiction that we will encounter in the next few sections between Husserl’s external “indication” and internal “expression”. It is why Derrida points out that, “the outside is the inside” and “there is no transcendental signified”. This “transcendental” is what lies outside of us as subjective being, such as this text. There is no outside signified because they are just internal signifiers expanding infinitely in our minds via differance as you read my writing. Thus, Derrida’s famous passage: “there is no outside text”. I will demonstrate the concept of differance later on.

Indication (Signifier) and Expression (Signified)

We will now add another twist to all of this by introducing the Husserlian terms: Indication and Expression which is more or less equivalent to the Saussurean Signifier and Signified. Recall how the signifier represents an external physical form of sound-image, whereas the signified represents an internal mental concept—which, for Derrida, is just more signifiers. Coincidentally, Husserl also makes a similar distinction between the indicative sign which is external, and the expressive sign which is internal.

For Husserl, indication “points” to an expression (indication is what Derrida will sometimes call, “the point of the finger”). The best example of indication is this piece of writing (or language in general). But if I write “asfopfaddsg”, this external indicative sign points to an expression which we do not know (a word / indication that we don’t know its “meaning” / expression to). Similar to what we already know, Husserl saw how indication (signifier) functions as a physical medium which serves as a form of communication such as speech and writing (i.e. this writing). All indications are entangled with an expression (signified) since we are already familiar with the English language.

Indication / expression is quite complex. Through Husserl’s thoughts, Derrida associates indication / expression with not just writing, but with the movement of our physical bodies. This will be something which I will not explain because to really understand it, you have to be fluent in Husserlian phenomenology, which can be quite difficult (Derrida is already difficult enough).

Inner Monologue, Expression and Animating Intention

“We are all mediators, translators.” — Jacques Derrida

Let us look at this piece of writing very carefully. Not many people visits my blog—only those who wishes to stalk me or is genuinely interested in the things I write would come here. If no one reads this writing, this text does not exist—it is literally, “dead”. Indication (writing) by itself is dead. But as soon as someone (i.e. a living being such as yourself) reads and interprets this writing, indication is animated by the person (you) as an expression (refer #2 and #3). This animation of indication into expression is what we shall call intentionality. Every time you animate this text, there is always an intention, even if this intention is of no intention.

Let us once again recall that indication (signifier) is external; expression (signified) is internal. For Derrida, since expression (signified) consists of more indications (of signifiers established by differance), indication is also an internal phenomenon. The complexities between indication and expression lies in how they are two sides of the same coin. When I indicatively write this post (or when I speak), I have an intention to express something from my internal mental thoughts into external indicative writing. At the same time, I am also expressing myself while I internally indicate (speak) to myself. Internal expression is entangled with “external” (internal) indication because I am internally talking to myself as I write; and this is what makes “inner monologue” as such. In the same way, when you (the reader) are interpreting this external indicative text, you are reanimating my writing with your own internal expressions and indications—i.e. you are talking to yourself as you read this text (refer #3). My external indicative writing becomes your internal expression / indication as you reanimate it with an intention that is uniquely your own. To help you understand this, I will share a diagram from my notebook:

As the author, I am someone who attempts to communicate by animating internal indications which occurs in my mind as expressions. The author passes from internal expression (indication / speaking to myself) externally as indicative writing. Inversely, when you read this indicative writing (“text”), the reader (you) reanimates my indicative writing into their (your) own internal expression / indication (refer #3). The word “intention” that is written on top of the arrows on both side of author / reader are heterogeneous—they are of different intentionalities.

This is where we understand why there are infinite interpretation to any text. Pure intentionality cannot be transmitted through speech / writing. Furthermore, this is also where we discover the difficulty of translation since we can never fully inherit the intentions of the original author. Hence, “pharmakon” which can translate into “remedy”, “poison” and “scapegoat” becomes undecidable. We simply do not know which word Plato meant. And whether it is one or the other depends on the intentionality of the reader / translator. Most importantly, this “pure” intentionality cannot even be expressed within our internal minds due to the effects of differance and temporality because it is always influenced by the reader’s unique contingent historical context.

Trace, Differance, Spacing and Temporality

“Time is out of joint” —Hamlet

We will now take one step further and integrate some of Derrida’s thoughts on how the signified (expression) is just a bunch of signifiers (indication) that occurs internally in our mind which is characterized by differance. We will also be drawing relationship on how this physical external indication which represents the phenomenon of space (“spatial”), entangles with our internal expression which is related to our consciousness of time (“temporal”). This will lead to a Derridean passage in Of Grammatology, on how our consciousness opens up the notion of “spacing”, which is “the becoming time of space [external] and the becoming space of time [internal]”. Just as external indication (space) is actually an infinite internal expression (through time), for Derrida, space and time are inseparable because they constitute each other as such.

The common perception of time is that it runs linearly in seconds, such as: “1…2…3…4…5…”, etc. In this case, while numbers are a representation of time, it does not account for how we experience time from a first person perspective (this is what phenomenology tries to study). The best example of understanding our experience of time is to compare it to how you are reading this text which also appears as a linear line (this is an idea from Heidegger that Derrida borrows from). Temporality consists of three main aspects. First (1), there consists of this very moment of “now”—of every single word you read in this sentence which is characterized as “the present moment”. The second (2) is the idea of “retention” where every single recognition (repetition) of this now is retained in our brain as what had just past. The third (3) is protention, which is the anticipation of what is to come in the near future which can never be fully predicted.

The complexity of this phenomenon is how every signifier you just read constantly refers itself to a retention / past—of what I shall now call as a “history” (or historical context). In order for me to understand this sentence, I have to retain the words at the very beginning. Just as, if I want to understand this post, I have to retain the information that was first introduced. And above all else, if I want to “understand” Derrida, I have to retain and understand the historical context of Husserl, Heidegger, Saussure, etc. who in themselves defers to more historical philosophers, poets, scholars and to infinity.

For Derrida, retention is a combination of all sorts. It is not a simple retention or short term memory of this moment, but an infinite deferral of a past / historical discourse that has always already been influenced by our imagination and memories (if I remember correctly, Derrida refers to retention as “Now X” which means “undefined”; and not “A” like in my diagram below). Another words, this present moment is only possible through the retention of the words you had just read—which is influenced by your own pre-established historical discourse. This is where we see differance taking full effect through its own absence.

The infinite movement of differance that occurs in our internal conscious mind is the absence of this word that you had just read. Indeed, what allows for a “presence” of meaning to establish is characterized by what had just disappeared into “space” as you read—namely, of what this word is not (as you just read it through time). Yet, this disappeared word still nevertheless “appear” to be “present” through our consciousness of temporality via retention (of X), even when it is absent. This quasi appearance of presence that reveals between the spaces of words as we read this sentence, is what Derrida famously calls, “Spacing” (of time).

In this diagram, the straight long arrow represents the linearity of time. What we see is how the “Now” (B) is only possible through the retention of A (or “X”, as Derrida would put it since it is a retention of all sorts). B is “B” because it is not “A”. And what sits between the space of B, A, and C is referred as spacing. This is why Derrida points out how the empty white space in this page takes on an importance. Our interpretation of every word relies on an abstract and absent mode of a historical past that has already been “written” before the subjective reader engages with the text (i.e. your unique contingent historico-contextual framework which allows you to establish meaning as you interpret every word in this text). This abstract and absent writing of space is what Derrida calls “archi-writing”, the most originary and unique form of writing. Thus, to “interpret” is “to read what wrote itself between the lines” which is a radically different “organization of space” than what appears as linear before our eyes. This is one of the reasons why the first part in Of Grammatology is called “Writing before the Letter”.

Now, the trickiest part of all this is how retention is also a mixed with protention as we read this text. Another words, what allows for our articulation of this present moment is not only that it is never “present” since it refers to a past, but it is also always moving towards a protention—such as your anticipation of the next word as you read. This “phenomenon”, if we can call it that (we can’t since this idea precedes phenomenology), is what Derrida calls, “Trace”. This “concept” of trace (not a concept), which is very similar to differance, is an abstract term devoid of any presence (I have demonstrated enough times on how this moment is constituted by differance, which is also a trace towards a past / anticipation). Trace is what Derrida refers as “the unity between retention and protention”—of a past and “what is to come”.

Metaphysics of Presence and Origin-Heterogeneous

“Metaphysics of presence” is a term Derrida borrows from Heidegger (physics studies reality; metaphysics studies what lies beyond reality—the term is hard to explain unless you already know what it is). Basically, Derrida thinks we have always privileged a form of immediate presence via metaphysics, which forces a “closure” in language by establishing a stable meaning. Derrida refers to this presence of closure as “logocentrism”. But as we can already see, there is no meaning that is completely “stable” due to the temporal effects of differance and trace. Every time we conceive of the “now”—which is the metaphysics of presence of the present moment—it is always already a past. In another words, there is never a “now” moment (the presence of the present), since time is always moving between retention and protention.

Recall how, when we read a book and attempt to understand it, we end up chasing the entire history. What we are really doing is we are trying to look for the “origin” of the author’s intentions in order to read them “accurately”. We often think we have found this “origin” through our interpretation of their book (and their influences) while privileging the “metaphysics of presence”; even when this origin cannot be found since it is based on our contingent historical discourse of a past that is always under temporal movement (and there is also the problem of intentionality which cannot be transmitted through speech and writing). Let us apply everything that we have learnt: your interpretation of the word—“origin”—implies how there are no origins since it is established by your retention which traces to all sorts of past and a future that is always to come. This is what Derrida calls “origin-heterogeneous”. Trace is the origin of your interpretation of the word “origin”. Trace is an absolute singularity because the concept does not exist. This is the most fundamental concept of deconstruction. —Thus, “deconstruction” deconstructs itself.

You were reading a somewhat retro loveletter, the last in history. But you have not yet received it. Yes, its lack or excess of address prepares it to fall into all hands: a post card, an open letter in which the secret appears, but indecipherably. What does a post card want to say to you? On what conditions is it possible?

Its destination traverses you, you no longer know who you are. At the very instant when from its address it interpellates, you, uniquely you, instead of reaching you it divides you or sets you aside, occasionally overlooks you. And you love and you do not love, it makes of you what you wish, it takes you, it leaves you, it gives you.

On the other side of the card, look, a proposition is made to you, S and P, Socrates and Plato. For once the former seems to write, and with his other hand he is even scratching. But what is Plato doing with his outstretched finger in his back? While you occupy yourself with turning it around in every direction, it is the picture that turns you around like a letter, in advance it deciphers you, it preoccupies space, it procures your words and gestures, all the bodies that you believe you invent in order to determine its outline. You find yourself, you, yourself, on its path. […]

This is my on-going close reading on some of Jacques Derrida’s most important seminars on Martin Heidegger from 1964-1965. It also consists of G.W.F Hegel who will be confronting his own destruction. Hopefully, there will be at least one more post in the future that will address Heidegger’s idea on “language as the house of being”.

Much of Derrida’s deconstruction came from his readings on Heidegger’s unfinished work Sein und Zeitwhere Derrida challenged its English translation as “Being and Time”. Derrida’s reading on this book happened when it was not completely translated into French which made him use many of his own translations. In it, Derrida famously points out how Heidegger changed his intentions sixteen years later after publishing Sein und Zeit. As we will soon see, Heidegger’s notion of destruction is what Derrida coins as deconstruction and that the most important word within the question of “What is being?” is the word “is”.

What Comes Before the Question?

Ontology is the study of “being” (human existence). The easiest way to understand Heidegger is to consider the question any theoretical physicist would ask: “What comes before the universe?” For Heidegger, it isn’t so much the answer than it is about the question in-itself. Heidegger is interested in what allows us to formulate this question in the first place. For Heidegger, asking a question always involves a certain form of being who precedes the question. To ask a question is to know what the question is—that there exists a question where one already knows parts of the answer to because it is guided by some form of being (later on, this “being” will be known as “Being”). In order for us to inquire about the universe, there is always already abeing in the universe. Another words, it is because we first exist as a human being in the universe which allows us to question it (a question that is guided by the intentionality of being). Thus, to know what a question is, to suggest the question of “what comes before the universe?”, and to question such question, is to pre-comprehend a certain form of being in the universe. In order for us to interrogate this being, one must already “know” something about it and exist within it.

It is not surprising that “What is being?” has been the most foundational question in history. While this originary question can take many other forms (i.e. “What is the meaning of life?”), the importance is that a certain form of being had always been the main object of inquiry in human existence. To ask “What is love?”, one must already have some sense of the love being. To ask “What is physics?”, one is already aware of their physical being. We always have some sense of being before one ventures out into some non-being by interrogating the very being that one has pre-comprehended via the question. There are many different beings who has different preferences on how they should “be” in this world. For example, scientific beings, mathematical beings, physical beings, biological beings, philosophical beings, sexual beings, psychological beings, etc.

The Problem on the History of Ontology

Hence the being that we pre-comprehend is what establishes the question as such. What then, is “being”? This originary question marks the beginning of thoughtbecause it directly seeks for the most authentic form of being which precedes this question. But for Heidegger, one of the thing that complicates and contaminates this question is the notion of history. It is apparent that we have lost touch with being from the historical dominance of cultural traditions, values and philosophical methods (an argument that is quite Nietzschean). It is thus, impossible to question being without answering it with some form of preconceived historical concept of being (one can even say, a prejudice of being). The originary question of being is contaminated and murmured by historical methods that consistently overlapped each other over time. The moment one asks the question of being, they are already associating it with all forms of traditional, cultural and philosophical methods (i.e. Hegelian, Kantian, Cartesian, etc.).

In order to overcome this problem, we must think of another history that is radically other to the ontological history. We must therefore, distinguish the difference between “being” and “Being” (with a capital B). This Being is the most original being which constitutes and always already guides the question of being along with the answers we have in response to it. For Heidegger, this Being is what he interprets as the German word Dasein (“being-there”)—something that we have lost touch with because philosophers had always avoided to solve it. In order for us to retrieve Dasein and a “fundamental ontology”, we have to destroy the history of ontology and its methods which obscures our ability of thinking it. For Derrida however, Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit only revealed to us “the historicity of Dasein but not Being”—or to quote without translation “…of Dasein but not Sein.“. This is because the word “ontology” is contaminated by its own history of metaphysics that traces all the way back to Aristotle. Even if one destroys the history of ontology, the word (fundamental) “ontology” can only designate a discourse about being which would only be a history of being such as Dasein, but never Being itself. Where Heidegger once thought that “ontology can escape the history of metaphysics, he now thinks ontology is historically metaphysical”. Heidegger no longer wanted to only destroy the history ofontology, he wanted to destroy ontology itself.

To answer the question of Being through “What is being?”, one must avoid answering it by defining being through ontic-metaphysical history because by doing so only marks a closed loop of the meaning of being within itself. Instead, and this is where the contradiction lies, one must look towards the signification (Bedeutung) of “being” through its grammar and etymology (the study of the historical origins of words) because language is the house of being. The mysterious Being is a radical alterity that cannot be defined through the discourses of ontic history, but can nonetheless only be found within history. As Derrida points out, “Ontology only concerns the on and not the einai [essence]” (my parenthesis).Yet, it is Being that is buried in history which still has an effect on the question of being in ontology and its history. What comes before the question of (onto-metaphysical-historical) being is a Being who pre-comprehends herself even when its meaning has been obscured through ontic history. Hence, one always have some sense of Being before asking the question of being because it is in the very form of the question which opens up this originary question of Being. Another words, the question of Being is within the question of being through grammar and etymology.

For example, in the question “What is being?”, the word “is” implies that there is always already a Being which allows one to say that being is like this or like that (being is scientific, sexual, etc.). To put it in Derrida’s own rhetorical words, “what is the being of the is which allows one to say that being is like this or like that?” Here, it is crucial we understand that “is” is the third person singular of the verb be. Thus, “Being”—which already misses the point the moment I write such word—is the third term that avoids all ontic historical discourses even within the question of “What is being?”. This is one of the reasons why Heidegger writes Beingunder erasure, a philosophical gesture that he started doing several years after publishing Sein und Zeit. One cannot retrieve Being by interpreting “Being” because the meaning of the word remains obscured and full of preconceived historical methods as we interpret it (to be sure, interpretation is always a prejudice)—even when we already know what Being “is”. Finally, I must also add, this is one of the reasons why Derrida crosses out is in his key text, Of Grammatology (1967).

[Note: In Voice and Phenomenon (I wrote a formal essay about it here), Derrida translates Husserl’s use of the German word “Bedeutung” as “want-to-say” instead of its usual translation as “signification”. One can already guess who it is that “want-to-say” (wants to signify) which is that of Being whose intentionality is always contaminated by a phenomenology of the past. Recall earlier, I spoke about how the question about the universe is always carried through by an intention that is guided by Being which one pre-comprehends. Nevertheless, Derrida is interested in the pure morphology of Bedeutung and the ways it could be translated and interpreted. Bedeutung’s polymorphic qualities are similar to the word “is” where we have some idea of what “is” means, but never in the absolute sense because its meaning changes depending on how we use it through grammar, implying that the meaning of Being shifts as a pure morphology (i.e. Just like “Being”, “is” can be used in an existential sense, sexual sense, scientific sense, etc.).]

The Destruction of Hegelianism, History and Ontology

For G.W.F Hegel, the study of the history of philosophy is the same as the study of philosophy—particularly the logical aspects of it. One can make the same claim in regards to the history of ontology and (fundamental) ontology. Let us follow Derrida’s thoughts and separate the difference between Heidegger’s destruction (of history and ontology) and Hegel’s notion of refutation. As Derrida points out, destruction is not a criticism, annihilation, a denial of historical ideas or a Hegelian refutation. Heidegger destroys history and ontology, but he never refutes in the Hegelian sense. Yet, not only is destruction and refutation are distinguished by a mere nothing—the destruction of history and ontology is a deconstruction.To understand this, let us look into Hegel’s idea of refutation.

For Hegel, every century of philosophies in history are marked by its “highest idea” making it “the last philosophy” of the time. For example, in 18th century we have Immanuel Kant. In early 19th century we have Hegel and later on Friedrich Nietzsche followed closely by Sigmund Freud and Edmund Husserl. Overtime, the highest idea steps down and yields to another highest idea. Refutation is this demotion of the highest idea which brings out a new highest idea. A metaphorical example of refutation Hegel uses is to think of how tree leaves are refuted by the blossom in which the blossom is refuted by the fruit. The importance is to understand how Hegel thinks each highest idea is related to the previous one—only that its relative position changes within the new highest idea while dividing into something different. Whereas for Heidegger (according to Derrida), each highest idea does not preserve what precedes it because the highest idea is a refutation of the previous one through division. This new highest idea via refutation is of inferior form. The blossom is the inferior form of the leaf and the fruit is the inferior form of the blossom. Each highest idea or ontological inquiry is the inferior form of the previous. Another words, the blossom is not present in the fruit because it has been refuted. Both the blossom and the fruit are not the true existence (Being) of the tree. Yet, all three of these (leaf, blossom and fruit) and their individual processes remains in unity within themselves and appears as if they are authentic being on its own.

We can already see why refutation is similar yet different to destruction of ontology and history. On one hand, new ontological, cultural and philosophical methods are the refutation of other historical, philosophical and ontological inquiries which are inferior to such form. These new methods appears as a unity in-itself which obscures our ability to reach Being. On the other hand, this last philosophy is no longer capable of refuting anything since the essence of refutation has been lost through history and distorted by logic, where the concept and historical predetermination of refutation ends up refuting its own essence. Therefore, to speak of Being is to speak of eschatology (i.e. death) because to retrieve Being is to destroy its history that is defined by other beings. Once again, this is not to say that Being is some empty concept beyond language and its history. The contradiction lies in the notion that Being is within language and history because language is the house of being. What one discovers in language is the aporiaof Being through the obscurantism of ontic history. And beyond this ontic history of “telling stories” (i.e. myths, philosophical novels, ontology, highest ideas) which is incredibly difficult to escape, there lies the historicity of Being within language and the question of being that is always already guided by Being(the “always” as a priori which modifies the “already”). Nevertheless, Hegel conceals the meaning of being within history, trapping himself into the historical tradition by recomprehending Plato and Aristotle. As a result, Heidegger’s destruction of history and ontology equates to the destruction of Hegelianism itself.

Unlike Hegel where the highest idea is created by refuting the previous, Heidegger destroys the highest ideas of history and ontology then surrounds it with an ontological silence—a nothingness. Contrary to popular interpretations, Heidegger does not go on to invent the highest idea known as “fundamental ontology”. Heidegger simply goes silent and does not propose any alternative ontology or philosophy. The destruction of history and ontology is the “shaking up”, the deconstruction of the history of ontology and ontology itself; to de-structure which brings out the structure of being only to recognize that Being is radically other to the historical-ontological inquiry that is “neither outside nor in it”. Since it is impossible to address the question of being without the concept of being and its predetermination, one must from the very beginning, work within metaphysical-historical concepts of being and language in order to reveal its veils and retrieve the history of Being. After all, as Derrida points out, there is no history without language, and no language without a history. This is the fundamental gesture of destruction which is precisely, a deconstruction.

Note: Before anyone reads this post, please keep in mind that it is out of date. I am not going to bother editing it anymore—nor will I delete it because some of the ideas in here are still helpful on deconstruction. I invite you to read my recent response between Slavoj Zizek and Jordan Peterson’s debate, here, and some of my other posts on Derrida here, here, here, and here.

From Jordan Peterson’s interviews, it is clear that he knows very little about Jacques Derrida’s intentions and the surrounding discourses which constitutes his project on deconstruction. For reasons which I will soon elaborate, it is not my goal to address the political aspects of Peterson’s thoughts because what I will discuss in deconstruction shall be conceived as the condition which grants the possibility of politics. In this post, I will analyze some of Peterson’s arguments through Derridean ideas in conjunction with Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis to show you Peterson’s misunderstandings of deconstruction. Other smaller topics will include feminism, sexuality, and speech / writing. In addition, I will provide numerous hyperlinks in brackets which are not essential unless you wish to study the subject mentioned further.

To begin with a summation, Peterson’s arguments on Derridean ideas are at best, a hypocritical endeavor. Peterson manages this by agreeing with Derrida that there are infinite interpretations to any given event and text—something which he takes for granted and ignores in his own argument. The biggest problem of all is Peterson’s interpretation of postmodernism that involves generalizing every 20th century intellectual discourse as if it had a Marxist agenda. To put this in Peterson’s own words, Peterson radically overplays his own hand through a generalization that can only impress those who has never picked up a 20th century continental text. This naive gesture, while appearing to be intelligent when interpreted by the masses, will also strike many as dishonest, ignorant and inconsiderate due to his misunderstandings of many 20th century continental ideas.

This is not to say that Peterson’s arguments are outright incorrect. As we will see, there are similarities between Derrida and Peterson that are only differentiated by context and intention. Contrary to expectations, one can even see similarities between Peterson and Marxism. For example, Peterson’s argument that schools are teaching children Marxist ideologies is actually a famous Marx / Engels argument against capitalism (Base and Superstructure). Unfortunately, my attempts at maintaining this post at a relative length will restrict me from speaking about Marx today.

Deconstruction and Meaning

One of Derrida’s most important argument is how there are infinite interpretations to any given event and text (I wrote an article on this here). This is the result of how the extraction of meaning is based on our subjective phenomenological intentions (in this case, your intentions). Derrida famously makes this claim by deconstructing Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology in his key text called Speech and Phenomena published in 1967. Phenomenology is the study of intentionality through consciousness and the temporal manifestation of space and time (Cartesian Meditations and Logical Investigations).

Let us examine the famous Derridean saying, “Deconstruction deconstructs itself” and how it can possibly yield to political thoughts. Due to the temporal effects of your intentions as you read this text, the meaning of “deconstruction” is only possible until you interpret this word through your own intentionality. Regardless of this phenomenon, “deconstruction” is a translation of Martin Heidegger’s term “destruktion” which in several other instances, Derrida also translates as “solicitation” and “shaking up”. As a result, deconstruction by itself (the word in-itself) is not a political tool. Rather, it is you who would possibly interpret deconstruction (or Derrida’s ideas) as a political tool through your own intentions. Deconstruction “is” the interpretative gesture (the act; verb) of reading a text or event and how such gesture undermines itself as one reads through phenomenological and ontological intentions. At the very interpretative “center”—that is, at the center of your intentionality as a function in relation to other centers—the deconstructive project has nothing to do with politics. Instead, it is this gesture of interpretation relating to other interpretations (differences) that is responsible for constituting politics (though I am sure some Derrideans would disagree with me and argue that there were politics since the very beginning of Derrida’s thoughts). Another words, what a subject does ethically, politically, or philosophically will depend on how and where one situate themselves within these centers of interpretations (Structure, Sign, and Play). For example, of how you interpret the word “deconstruction” (i.e. whether it is political or not)—which deconstructs itself as you interpret the word.

Accordingly, Peterson agrees with Derrida’s argument of infinite interpretation, but only that we as interpreters of the world and texts, should only extract the “good” and “useful” things which helps guide one to living in our society (Peterson says it here). Certainly, this is already (at least) two ways of interpreting a text. And as I have already pointed out, Peterson does exactly this: interpretingDerrida and postmodernism under a Marxist lens. Whether one reads the text through pessimism or as a way to live amongst other people is also determined by the reader’s intentions. It isn’t that one should not interpret anything “useful” or “good” out of literature, but rather, one should be cautious of what they interpret and claim as “useful” or “good” because the two terms are subject to “pure morphology”—that the possibility of a meaningful discourse (or the possibility of a truth), whatever it may be (political, surreal, sexual, etc.), is born from your interpretation of these words.

If we understand how Peterson interprets Derrida and the entire postmodernism through a Marxist lens based on his own intentions, we will understand Peterson’s claim that people interpret the world / texts through the means of facilitating their own acquisition of power—precisely, of what is “good” and “useful” for them. The acquisition of power is only possible through one’s desire for power (something which will be crucial once we get to Lacanian psychoanalysis). Most of the things we do are self-serving towards individual desires which often undermines others. For Peterson, this is what we see amongst the postmodernists, as he points out that feminists desires for the acquisition of power / rights. However, this argument on the acquisition of power merits truth not only towards postmodernists and feminists, but for everyone including Peterson. Indeed, one should go as far as questioning Peterson’s interpretations of Derrida and his own arguments: are not Peterson’s political maneuvers directed towards his own desire for power? But let us not pursue this any further, for my intention is about Derrida’s thoughts. Nevertheless, we can begin to see that Peterson’s argument on one’s desire for power is also apparent in Derrida’s thoughts: since there are infinite amount of interpretations to any event or text, the reader only read what they desire to read out of any particular event or text. Here, Peterson and Derrida appears to be making similar arguments (because I think they are), even when they are speaking about them under very different intentions.

Postmodernism as Post-…

Marx is a big precursor to postmodernism and no one can deny this. I think it is partly true that postmodernism is a re-branded term for Marxism because some postmodern thinkers such as Louis Althusser were greatly influenced by him. Perhaps Marxism is most apparent in Frankfurt School even if its scholars are usually not considered as postmodernists. Most Frankfurt scholars were (and still are) incredibly influential amongst the humanities and fine arts disciplines.

It is not surprising that the term “postmodernism” is such a vague term that many of the figures that are categorized in it do not associate themselves with such label. The fact is, many mid-late 20th century continental philosophies are not about Marx, but a response to Husserl’s phenomenology, and to a great extent, on Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Ferdinand de Saussure and G.W.F Hegel. Even Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, which influenced many 20th century “postmodern” scholars, was written dedicated to Husserl “in admiration and friendship” (Heidegger was Husserl’s student). To name a few more: Jacques Derrida, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Merleau-Ponty can all be considered as post-phenomenologists. The former three were also hugely influenced by Heidegger and Nietzsche. Then there is Jacques Lacan who we will discuss momentarily, that is influenced by Freud (especially), Hegel, and Heidegger. Finally, there are others like Gilles Deleuze whose magnum opus, Difference and Repetition, was influenced by Nietzsche’s concept of “the eternal return”.

(Phal)Logocentrism and the Psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan

There is a very long and complicated relationship between Derrida and Lacan. The two actually don’t agree with each other in many levels (i.e. Derrida is a critic of Lacan and vice versa). I am just going to highlight some ideas between the two because it is really hard to introduce them unless you have actually put in the time on learning their ideas.

The word logocentrism (“logos” is the ancient Greek word of “λόγος” which means “reason”, “speech”, “word” and “discourse”) focuses on how civilization privileges speech over writing. As Aristotle puts it: “Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words”. This implies that speech is the primary mode of acquiring truth since it is closest proximity to our mental thoughts (inner monologue). For Derrida, such idea is eclipsed once we recognize how speech is overlapped by the fact that when one reads a text, the text is also in direct relation with one’s spoken thought through “hearing-oneself-speak” (auto-affection). Another words, one hears their own speech in their heads as they read the text (i.e. as you read this text). To put it simply, the “binary opposition” between speech and writing are one and of the same contradiction. Speech and writing just different forms used to represent the same (English) language.

To be logocentric involves two main aspects: First, logocentrism is to ignore the historical practice that all production of truth and knowledge are acquired through the interpretation of writing or language in general—namely from interpreting books or events (this is to say that inscription is only one form of writing and that everything around us that we see is also a writing). Second, this privileging of logos (reason) is when one favors the system of logical grammar as they constitute meaning based on their phenomenological interpretation of texts. Another words, we don’t just interpret anything from texts and events, we privilege on extracting the logical (grammatical) aspects of it. This latter idea is from G.W.F Hegel (Lectures on the History of Philosophy) which Derrida cited in his early seminars from the 1960s.

With logocentrism, phallogocentrism (phal = phallus) is combined with the thoughts of Jacques Lacan who rebuilt Freudian psychoanalysis into his own school known as Lacanian psychoanalysis. Lacan is infamously renown for proclaiming the absence of feminine sexuality. The passage, “there is no such thing as woman”, is one of the most misinterpreted and controversial sentence of Lacan (Seminar XX). To help us understand this claim, let us understand two crucial points. First, phallogocentrism points to the idea that the construction of language and meaning is privileged towards the masculine and is phallic in nature (from readings of Freud; the symbolic). This meaning is known as the master signifier which functions as an anchoring point by fixing a specific meaning in place (Seminar XVII). Therefore secondly, the claim that there are no feminine sexuality was made not because there are no feminine sexuality, but because there are no symbolic language which can describe it. In order to explain feminine sexuality, one must go in excess (surplus) of the signifier which in this case, is what lacks within the signifier (I will get to this). Expanding from Freud’s ideas of woman’s penis envy, Lacan thinks it isn’t the actual penis woman desire, but the symbolic and patriarchal power behind the phallus. Part of the reason why no one can describe feminine sexuality is because (many) feminists desires for the symbolic power of the phallus. Thus, phallogocentrism points to how our intentions of interpreting the world and the way we construct meaning / language are inherently phallic from the beginning. One privileges and desires for phallic (patriarchal) power and meaning for their own gains—even if one is a self-proclaimed feminist.

Due to this, feminist Helene Cixous developed a “woman’s writing” (ecriture feminine) that tried to challenge masculine-privileged construction of meaning by—as Lacan would remark on James Joyce—“stuffing the signifier” with literary allusions. For Lacan, Joyce is the perfect example of woman’s writing because it shows the excess point where the signifier can no longer sustain itself due to the abundance of literary allusions. By compressing allusions into signifiers, one will recognize what lacks in them—namely, the contradiction of the missing literary allusions (this excess lack [of phallic signifier] is where feminine sexuality arises). Certainly, one may think that Joyce is a man (with a phallus) who can’t possibly produce a woman’s writing. For Lacan, sexuality is not determined by our reproductive organs, but by how one experiences sexual enjoyment (Jouissance andBeyond the Pleasure Principle). To be sure, sexual enjoyment can be experienced in all sorts of ways through sublimation, and not just via methods of copulation with object a (object cause of desire; objet petit a)that can never be attained. In context of Joyce, the stuffed signifier is our object of desire—we desire to understand the allusions and meanings that Joyce compresses in his writing which can never be anchored as stable “phallic” signifiers. Through sublimation, reading and speaking becomes a form of desire for sexual satisfaction. This is why Lacan once famously said, “For the moment, I am not fucking, I am talking to you. Well! I can have exactly the same satisfaction as if I were fucking.”

[Note: Alenka Zupancic showed a new interpretation of Lacan by saying that femininity is the phallic signifier (What is Sex?, 2017). A similar strand of thought can also be found in Slavoj Zizek’s writings (both Zupcancic and Zizek are Lacanian Hegelians).]

Phallogocentrism, as Peterson says, relates to how “culture is male dominated” which he thinks is a “radical simplification of the historical story”. As we can see, not only is psychoanalysis far from being a simplification of history, Peterson’s claim that feminists desires for the acquisition of power is reaffirmed by Lacan: that they (we) desire for symbolic phallic power that is inherent in language / meaning.Phallogocentrism is not “exactly” used to describe how the male dominates the female under the the historicity of economical conditions as Peterson thinks (though I do not doubt this claim under his intentions). And despite that Derrida had always been a critic of psychoanalysis (Resistances of Psychoanalysis), phallogocentrism speaks about the problems in the history of philosophy under the context of Husserl, Heidegger, Lacanian psychoanalysis and the privileging of phallic signifier over the lack of one in a woman. Yet, we must not rule out Peterson’s argument (on men being economically marginalized) with Lacan’s thoughts. In order to speak of Petersons argument from Lacanian perspective, one would have to begin with what Lacan calls the Master’s discourse (or Capitalist discourse)in conjunction with his readings on G.W.F Hegel’s master-slave dialectic (Seminar XVII). Something which I shall leave for another time.

What I am trying to point out in this post is the differences in disciplines and how there is a whole history behind psychoanalysis and Derrida’s deconstruction that Peterson had never thought of simply because he was not trained in it.

I was invited by Indulgencezine to write a short article on how Jacques Derrida’s book Of Grammatology has changed the way I saw our current moments of society. In order to keep it short and simple for general audience, I had to avoid complex concepts. Here, I would like to expand on the ideas from this article. To do this, I shall simply select specific passages and elaborate on them. This post is lengthy and somewhat complex, but it will explain every single sentence of the article. You don’t have to read my “notes” (in grey) if you don’t want to.

The Beginning of Writing

While it only took me a few hours to write this piece for Indulegencezine, I had to be very careful. This is because the notion of “writing” is the subject that Derrida tries to caution us in. Yet, Derrida recognizes how writing is a necessary tool for communication and that even his own writing cannot escape this fact. The difficulty here lies on how Derrida’s thoughts on writing does not privilege anything – not even his own writing. This is more or less why his works (especially his earlier ones) are infamous for being impenetrable.

Deconstruction is basically reading and interpretation like how you are reading this text right now. When you read Derrida, you are actually reading him read other people’s works. This is why Derrida doesn’t invent anything other than non-existent concepts like “differance”. An intentional spelling mistake to be sure, this neologism got so famous that it was added to the Oxford dictionary. Nonetheless, through deconstruction, Derrida tries to show that all writings, whether a novel, philosophical text, etc., will inevitably contradict itself regardless of how logical or convincing it appears to be. This is what many deconstructionists refers as “internal contradiction”. As a result, deconstruction remains one of the most profound contemporary movements in criticizing all forms of texts and institutional structures (ie. politics, capitalism, ideologies, education, academia, etc.).

Once again, we deconstruct as we read and interpret writings of all forms. In this way, the word “deconstruction” cannot sustain itself because you are already deconstructing the word “deconstruction” as you read it. Therefore, “deconstruction” deconstructs itself.

The Passages

The following passages are the beginning and the ending of my article:

I must speak of this broadly because writing is essentially everywhere….In fact, our thoughts are often, but never in the absolute sense, controlled and limited by writing. We think only in writing. In this way, all writings are inherently political because we privilege what we write over what we do not write.

[. . .]

Therefore, perhaps the reason why my writing eludes even me—the author of this article—is because you are imagining the presence of my speech as you read it. But my writing does not speak, it is silent.

I chose to begin and end with elaborating on writing intentionally. I use the word “writing” and not “speech” or “language” for four specific reasons (which are also integral to most of my article):

1. For Derrida, speech has always been privileged over writing. He traces this all the way back to Plato‘s dialogues (most notably in Phaedrus). Speech is more authentic because it represents our thoughts (the “voice” that you hear in your head when you are thinking or reading this text) while writing simply represents speech. Imagine that I was giving a lecture and you were typing out all of my speech on your computer. Writing becomes a utensil to represent my speech. In this scenario, speech is given priority over writing.

2. One of the main goals that Derrida tried to show in Of Grammatology is to reveal how our speech is no different to the structure of writing and that writing has actually taken a parasitic role. Many philosophers (ie. Edmund Husserl and Ferdinand de Saussure) has privileged the “voice of being” (speech) because it represents our thoughts. But for Derrida, not only is the structure of writing identical to the structure of speech, writing has taken over speech – that writing is speech through supplementation.

3. However, through some very sophisticated maneuvers, Derrida reveals how while speech and writing basically shares the same structure, they are both utensils (a substance of expression) in supplementing a more “original language“. This original language is what he calls “arche-writing” (“origin-writing”). Using Danish linguists Louis Hjelmslev and H.J Uldall (Copenhagen school), Derrida isolates areas where both speech / writing are inadequate in representing each other as such. Writing cannot accurately represent accents, and speech cannot represent the spacing between words (ie. grammar). This empty gap where both speech / writing cannot represent is what Derrida famously refers to as “spacing”, “arche-writing”, “differance”, “trace” or in his later works, “pharmakon” and “aporia”. I will return to the term “differance” in a later passage.

Note: “Substance of expression” plays a multi-disciplinary role here because it is not only mentioned in Of Grammatology, but it is also a crucial term that is deconstructed in Speech and Phenomena where Derrida contrasts it (substance of expression / expression / “Bedeutung”; which were also used by Edmund Husserl) with an opposing term called, “indication”.

4. Two days later, you reread your own lecture notes and realize that my speech is gone. Yet you still hear a voice in your head as if I was speaking, why? If speech / writing is associated to the “voice of being”, then writing must also be attached to phenomenology (the study of phenomena). Writing supplements a speech which is not actually there, but conjured from our imagination (so to speak). In many passages from Of Grammatology, Derrida uses the phenomenological term “auto-affection” to describethis. Other times, he will use the words “an addition to nothing”, or “masturbation” (writing supplements real speech in the same way that masturbation supplements real sex).

To say with the least confusion, the concept of the supplement is paradoxical in the sense that whatever functions as the supplement (such as writing supplementing speech) will play the parasitic role as an “addition to nothing“. That once again, writing is not an addition to speech, but an addition to nothing because writing is speech.

Note: The concept of the supplement came from Jean-Jacques Rousseau which he referred to as “the dangerous supplement”.

…When I privilege presence, I exclude absence. And what makes all this even more paradoxical is that the word “absence” is the presence of the sense of absence. Therefore, absence is not absent. The word “absence” is inadequate in representing itself through writing.

Two important points:

1. The absence that I point out here “haunts” my entire article. For example, when one reads my writing, you are recognizing me speaking to you. This is because the reader (you) is already caught in the act of privileging the presence of my speech (via this writing) over its absence. But in truth, “my writing does not speak”. This absence will be seen when I get to the neologism of “differance” (spelt with an a).

2. I chose to simply use the word “presence” and not “metaphysics of presence” to avoid jargon. The latter is a term adapted by Derrida from Martin Heidegger, a famous German philosopher who proclaimed “the end of metaphysics”. Here, “metaphysics” should be seen as a derogatory term. Metaphysics = beyond the physical (ie. knowledge, language, etc. because we cannot physically hold onto them). Heidegger criticized how the entire history of philosophy is dominated by metaphysics (which helped established much of our most profound subjects today). Basically, Heidegger thinks we have taken the wrong path since the beginning of humanity. This ultimately led him to develop a new form of philosophy and bring back fundamental thoughts on our long “forgotten Being”. But for Derrida, writing is in itself metaphysical (Heidegger recognizes this as well). The fact that Heidegger tried to develop his new thoughts through writing which sought to challenge metaphysics is therefore problematic (hence he invented Sous rature). From this, Derrida would try to escape metaphysics once and for all with “deconstruction” which takes me to the next passage.

Through Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction, the left is possible because it is constituted by the difference of what it isn’t, which is that of the right. In the same way, presence is only possible because of absence. Derrida shows us that what establishes a privileged writing, idea or thought as such, is only possible through the opposite order of what we do not privilege. We see this in all “binary oppositions”: presence/absence, speech/writing, man/woman, left/right, masculine/feminine, humanity/animality, society/nature, etc.

In this article, I chose to use some of the most basic and fundamental binary oppositions. I also missed out on other important oppositions such as life/death and good/evil. For Derrida, the meaning of words are established as such through the difference of what the word is not (this idea actually came from linguist Ferdinand de Saussure). A “dog” is a dog because it is not a “cat”, “table”, etc., all of which can more or less be considered as oppositions. The point is that through differences, one never actually arrives at a stable meaning. If a “dog” is a dog because it is not a “cat”, then when do we talk about the “cat”, which is as such only because it is not a “table”, “dog”, and to infinity? Through differences, meaning is always deferred. The moment we say that a cat is a “cat”, we are excluding the differences that constitutes the “cat” as such (which is everything other thanthe cat). Thus, the word “deconstruction” is everything other than the word “deconstruction”:

I am writing everything other than what I am writing here.

To be sure, I used the term “difference” and not “differance” (spelt with an a) because I had to save word space in my article. Since “difference” (with an e) is in itself a writing, we can simply say that what constitutes this difference is the neologism of “differance”(with an a). The “e” and the “a” are constantly being differed (I will soon show this). However, the spelling mistake of “differance” (with an a) was done intentionally for several other important reasons and discourses (some of which are too laborious to explain; even I am not familiar with them). Nonetheless, it is important we keep in mind that “differance” (with an a) is not a word, and therefore not something where the concept of speech / writing can represent (one must question why “differance” should even be added into the Oxford dictionary).

Three important propositions:

1. In French language, the articulation of “différence” and “différance” (with an a) sounds the same. Their differences can only be distinguished through the graphic form of writing. This idea was pointed out by Derrida in his essay / lecture titled, Différance.

2. The “a” within “différance” cannot be articulated and understood within speech except through the proper word of “différence” (with an e). When I speak the word “différance” (with an a), one would make the mistake of hearing it as the real word “différence” that is more familiar to us via the structure of writing. The articulation of “différence” (with an e) will inevitably carry the inarticulation / difference (absence) of “différance” (with an a) which is beyond what the structure of speech / writing can represent.

3. Part of the point above (#2) is to show that there are sounds, such as the “a” in “différance” where speech, which is also writing, cannot represent. Simply put, there are always sounds that we cannot articulate through the structure of speech / writing. Here, we not only begin to see the limits of speech / writing, but that there are two types of speech / writing. The first is the speech / writing which we use all the time, such as this text – it controls articulation and intelligibility. The second is a speech / writing which we cannot represent with the former concept of writing, it is an arche-writing (so to speak; it is also why Derrida calls for the study of grammatology). In Of Grammatology, this irreconcilability was explained through semiotic / linguistic jargon between “signifier” and “signified”. Différance (with an a) therefore, falls along the lines of “arche-writing” where both speech / writing (that we come to know) cannot fully represent. But above all else, différance is beyond metaphysics because it does not exist. Différance is not a word.

Note: This reading is verified in Speech and Phenomena when Derrida addresses Husserl’s heterogeneous concepts between (substance of) “expression” and “indication”. Expressions are signs that carries meanings (linguistic value), and indications are signs that are empty without meaning – it does not consist of any sense (“Sinn”).

For example, Derrida intentionally avoids translating the German word “Bedeutung” keeping it incomprehensible until fifteen pages into the book. As an English reader who does not know the German language, one would read this word without knowing what it means. Therefore, “Bedeutung” functions as an indication (without sense) instead of having an expression of meaning. Only later does Derrida reveal that Bedeutung actually means “about something”, a “subject that ‘wants-to-say'” (intentionality), and “a sense of an expression that means”[16]. Here, you see Derrida using his writing as examples for his own arguments.

Thus, I do not proclaim…I am neither present or absent, a feminist or anti-feminist.

At this point, I am not sure if it is whether language as a whole, or if it is the construction of meaning that is patriarchal (I think the latter is correct). But I think this idea has to do with how writing self-proclaims as authentic language. As I quote Derrida, writing “produces truth instead of recording it”. Hence, I sometimes find many discourses that claims how their ideas (writing) are “universal” to be problematic (possible exceptions are contemporary thinkers like Alain Badiou, Quentin Meillassoux, and Francois Laruelle).

Of course, I speak of this enslaved writing not just within deconstruction, but also in other contexts of Jacques Lacan, and Jean Baudrillard, they all speak of writing as a discourse which has authority over us. This is why I think that post-structural feminists are the most profound feminists because they understand the problems of writing. Here, I am thinking of Simon de Beauvoir, Helene Cixious, Julia Kristeva, and in certain cases, Monique Wittig. I also think non post-structural contemporaries like Adriana Cavarero makes some very creative and clever points.

Now, if you will allow me to return to Derrida and recall on “arche-writing”. This writing is what I would call as a woman’s writing. It is in fact the most authentic writing. But it is also a writing that is always a differance (with an a) – always deferred and therefore uncertain, playful, and obscure. You can find a similar approach (yet, very different) to such indetermination in de Beauvoir’s famous book Second Sex whereshe speaks about “the myth of the woman”.

You will now understand the following passage:

In fact, our thoughts are often, but never in the absolute sense, controlled and limited by writing. We think only in writing. [underlining added]

“And if society is the privileged home for humanity, then I must also be the homeless animal.”

One of my favorite lines. It is a passage that I borrowed from my unpublished texts. In the same way that the privileging of something will exclude the difference of what constitutes that one thing: with the proliferation of society and anthropocentrism (humans as the most important entity in existence), we exclude nature.

There are two primary oppositions seen here: humanity/animality and society (culture)/nature. I took to consider on what humans are: “the thinking human animals”. This statement is more relevant in contemporary thought than it is in older 17th-18th century Kantian or Cartesian way of thinking; this is because I am also considering 19th century Darwinism (that we are evolved from animals). If humans proclaims and privileges society as the home, then we are also animals without our actual home because we are depriving ourselves from nature. In this sense, we are all homeless while being home to society (I recall a passage where Derrida writes, “Nature denatures itself”). Whereas the real homeless are more in touch with nature than we are. A paradox to be sure, this is one of my interests right now, from real homelessness, all the way to Foucault’s thoughts on parrhesia and the homeless cynic life which is animal like; and Buddhist ideas on suffering, fear and anxiety – Buddhism was founded from homelessness.

Note: If you are interested, famous ancient philosophical Buddhist texts by Nagarjuna will have similar views (though far different when compared to Derridean thought) about “language” and “meaning” functioning as a form of delusion that causes suffering when one becomes attached to it (ie. when we become too attached to things like wealth, etc.). I am beginning to think that Asian philosophy has a better understanding of this long before 20th century Europeans (ie. Derrida).

“Writing is thus, the perfect crime…Writing is the violence which has imposed upon us without ever announcing itself.”

By now, this passage should be well understood. If speech / writing is what constitutes much of our thoughts, then everything in society must also be constituted by such structures that is metaphysical in nature. Much of these structures dominates our lives and acts as a form of exclusion (ie. ideology, capitalism, etc.). But by privileging these structures in general, we are excluding other things: animals, nature, homeless, or people who don’t “fit in” (alienation).

Writing is the perfect crime in the sense that we cannot solve such crime because we are at a point where writing is inevitable (ie. this text). This is related to thinkers like Georges Bataille and his book Literature and Evil simply because writing is inherently evil (think about films like Nocturnal Animals).

Or as Phaedrus points out: “the evil of writing comes from without”.

I tell them that unless I am trying to show how we privilege one thought over the other (which makes me a critic for the better), I would have nothing to say.

In 1967, when Derrida infamously called for “the end of the book” in his magnum opus Of Grammatology, he actually meant “the end of writing”.

What does this mean? We only wish to read what we want to read out of a particular text and we proclaim what we read as such by writing it out (such as my reading of Derrida that you just read). To be more precise, the first chapter in Of Grammatology was titled “The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing”. After we finish reading a book, we write. We select specific passages and argue that this book is about x or y which would therefore exclude other possible readings of the same book. The final and absolute meaning of any particular argument of a book is impossible due to differences.

Above all else, there was never such thing as “the book” in the absolute sense. We not only use writing as a supplement for the author, but also as our self-presence (that I hear my own voice when I quietly read; that the word “I” is only a supplement of the singular self) even when writing makes no sounds. This can be most famously witnessed from Socrates, the founder of Western Philosophy 2500 years ago who never wrote any texts. Yet, his presence and speech is supplemented through the dialogues / writings from his students such as Plato. Thus for Derrida, Socrates is “the last philosopher of the book and the first thinker of writing”.